Assange Episode 9: Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda trained by CIA 20 years ago

The main enemy of the US – Al-Qaeda-was once financed and trained by Washington to fight the Soviet Union, Pakistani politician Imran Khan reminded Julian Assange. But after 9/11 it suddenly became an enemy and Pakistan people refused to accept it.

­In the ninth episode of his show Julian Assange talks to Imran Khan, whose political party was ignored for years and which US State Department cables called “Pakistan’s one-man party.”

But today he is a front-runner in Pakistani politics. Nowadays his party counts far more than “one member” as electable people come to join him.

But when, Khan, a former captain of Pakistan’s victorious cricket team, created his party from humble origins no one paid attention, no one supported him.

That was so till Khan’s party, along with a few others, boycotted the elections in 2008, because they “were manipulated by the Bush administration,” and until his predictions turned out to be obvious.

Khan has always warned that elections would be “a disaster for the people of Pakistan” and that Pakistani leaders were turncoats telling Americans how great they were, but at the same time giving their own citizens a different opinion.

“The War on Terror has been devastating for Pakistan,” Khan says, because 40,000 Pakistanis have been killed “fighting America’s war.” “Basically, our own army was killing our own people.”

Imran Khan explained that about 20 years ago Osama Bin Laden and the whole of al-Qaeda were trained by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and CIA.

“These people were assets of the Pakistan Army,” he said. “They were trained by the Pakistan Army and the ISI, financed by the CIA, but they were fighting the Soviets, and for a long time these groups had very close association with the Pakistan secret agencies.”

“Now suddenly comes 9/11 and you do a 180 degrees turn,” he explained. “But it doesn’t mean that all along the way that people would have accepted this. Because here were people trained for Jihad – Jihad in this case means fighting a foreign occupation – so how were you going to convince them having indoctrinated not only these militant groups but also your own agencies, that they're fighting foreign occupation as a religious duty.”

“No country has ever been bombed by its own ally, as we have been bombed in this country. Never has a country's ruling elite, for personal benefits, never have they betrayed their people as much as this elite under Musharraf and the current elite,” Khan says.

Imran Khan says that the US operation on Pakistan’s soil in May 2011 against Osama bin Laden was the “ultimate humiliation” for the state, which was “sacrificing for the US.”

It turned out that “our ally did not trust us and actually came and killed someone on our own soil. It was that the two factors combined: the sacrifices, and secondly, here is an ally which – are we a friend or an enemy?”

Khan says the “client-master relationship” between the US and Pakistan, when the latter is “a hired gun, being paid to kill America’s enemies” should be reviewed.

“The only thing that the Americans should be told is that “Look, there will be no terrorism from our side,” he says.

The relationship with the US should be based on “dignity and self-respect” instead of the “client-master” model.